Vellanoweth found guilty in crash that killed four

The gubernatorial appointments, the political connections, the
30-year history as a top-level California bureaucrat – none of it
helped Roberto P. Vellanoweth on Thursday when he was led out of the
courtroom in handcuffs.

An eight-man, four-woman jury found the
longtime Sacramento insider and civic-minded activist guilty of gross
vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated and of two other drunken
driving counts.

It took the jury only two hours and 33 minutes to
arrive at the verdict in a case that gripped the city during the
three-week trial like few before it in recent years.

"I can't
recall a case of vehicular manslaughter in the last 20 years or more
that has attracted the local public attention that this one has," said
Assistant District Attorney Albert Locher.

In his closing
arguments, Locher pounded Vellanoweth as a liar, a drunkard and, on
March 26, 2007, a killer when he got behind the wheel of his Jeep Grand
Cherokee with a blood-alcohol concentration later measured at 0.16
percent – twice the legal limit.

"I think the number of
individuals who were killed, the fact that children were killed, the
fact that we have a man who has a long life with no record, and then
makes such a bad decision and winds up with so many people killed in
one day – I think all of those come together to make it a case that
just captures the public's eye," the prosecutor said.

Vellanoweth,
when it was over, turned and nodded to his crying family members who
filled three rows of seats in Department 19 of Sacramento Superior
Court.

Then the bailiffs cuffed him and took him to jail, out back, through Judge Patrick Marlette's chambers.

Defense
attorney Christopher Wing had asked the judge to let Vellanoweth remain
free on the $250,000 bail that has kept him out of lockup for the past
16 months.

Marlette had none of it.

"You've been found
guilty of killing four people," Marlette told Vellanoweth. "From the
beginning of this case, you have attempted to avoid accepting
responsibility for your actions. … I cannot say I have confidence you
will willingly return."

Sentencing is set for Aug. 12.

Vellanoweth,
64 – a former member of the Youthful Offender Parole Board and a
panelist on the state Board of Optometry, as well as a one-time career
executive assistant in multiple agencies of state government – faces a
maximum prison term of 17 years and eight months, according to the
latest calculations.

April Rice, the mother of two of the four
people killed in the collision and the grandmother of another, took joy
in the verdict. She was especially gratified, she said, by the jury's
rejection of the defense contention that her daughter, Brizchelle
"Chelle" Rice-Nash, 21, who was driving the car that was destroyed by
Vellanoweth's Jeep, somehow caused the wreck.

"So many emotions are going on inside me," Rice said in an interview after the verdict. "It's been very hard.

"It's
been sad, listening to the lies, the stories. Some things I could deal
with and sometimes I had to step outside the courtroom, just to take a
breath."

The collision also killed Rice-Nash's 19-month-old son,
Kamall Osby, as well as her sister, Brittanya "Tanya" Rice-Nash, 17,
and their friend Shanice Patrice Carter, 18.

Another friend, Tanisha Jackson, suffered devastating injuries in the crash, but survived.

Rice thanked the jury for doing its job.

"They brought us justice," she said.

The
Vellanoweth family, including the defendant's wife and a number of his
children and other relatives, filed out of the courtroom, in tears,
without comment.

Defense attorney Wing offered a defense that
contended Vellanoweth wasn't drunk at the time of the wreck, despite an
afternoon that included a three-martini lunch and at least one massive
blast of what his client testified he thought was a kamikaze virgen.

Wing
also sought to shift causation of the collision to the victims, saying
their 1984 Chrysler LeBaron – estimated to be going 14 mph to
Vellanoweth's 72 mph – crawled along in his lane and forced him to
swerve to the wrong side of the road. When the Chrysler also moved
over, the deadly collision thundered along rainy South Land Park Drive,
the defense said.

The
lawyer said the tide of public opinion, of government, of the media
rolled against his client from the moment of the crash and continued
through Thursday's verdict.

"Everybody pretty much had made up
their mind," Wing said. "That's difficult. It's what Albert said in his
close: 'Obviously, this guy's a drunk, he was driving on the wrong side
of the road.' I just don't think that's what the facts were."

Locher
countered after the verdict that, "The evidence indicates that Mr.
Vellanoweth was guilty and that's what the jury found."

"We
thought all along the evidence was there," Locher said. "What made it a
challenging case in a sense was, there were a lot of resources put into
this case by the defense. Anytime you have to cross-examine four
Ph.D.s, that presents a challenge."

Vellanoweth's defense paid $104,000, at least, to a team of experts to sow doubt in the jury's collective mind.

In
the end, it didn't work. One juror, who gave her name only as Dolly,
said the case was decided on one simple concept – "the facts."

"You
can't change the facts," she said. "You can't change anything. The
facts are there. That's what you go by. There are just so many of them."

Beyond
the facts, there was the narrative of a story that served to grip
Sacramento for nearly three weeks. Around water coolers and computer
banks, people all over town talked about the case and posted hundreds
of comments on Web sites like sacbee.com that carried the daily
blow-by-blow.

California State University, Sacramento,
communications professor Barbara O'Connor called the case "our version
of O.J. Simpson."

Instead of a rich former football star accused
of killing his beautiful wife, this one involved a powerful inside
Sacramento political player in Vellanoweth, who started a business to
help clients fix whatever problems they had with government.

It
also had a working single mom on her way to school to pick up a kid, in
a car with a baby, a friend and a sister. She and her sister and baby
lived with their mom, who hasn't worked in two years because of an
on-the-job injury, and another sister, in a tight family battling tough
circumstances.

"People know the people involved," O'Connor said.
"It was obviously a true drama, and those kinds of narratives, any kind
of local drama, attracts people's attention. We learned about the
people who were killed and about him. Many of us have driven the same
roads. It's very personal."

April Rice and Shanice Carter's
mother, Brenda Green, and their family and friends and supporters also
filled several rows of courtroom seats. They kept their emotions in
check and the judge thanked them as well as the Vellanoweths for
maintaining their "discipline" through the proceedings.

The Rices and the Greens also have civil lawsuits pending, and there will be more court hearings in their future.

On
Thursday, they were happy about a jury that saw the criminal case their
way and a city that they said supported them through the worst time in
their lives.

"I'm very thankful for that support," April Rice
said. "The community was involved, and I didn't get to thank them for
that. That's what kept me strong, and that's what's keeping me strong
now, still knowing I have that support."